The year so far

Ok, so I've been hopeless at posting this academic year, but I am still here!

I've finished my independent study and my dissertation, thank goodness. I'm on placement on a non-traditional placement at a residential college for adult education, I've done a month, then I have another 8 weeks left and 2 weeks at university before I finish my degree (well if I don't fail anything, so fingers crossed).

Tim is recovering from his second foot operation in January and seems to be doing ok at the moment. I'm nt sure if it has been easier this time as we knew what to expect, or tougher as we knew how long the recover was and could be more realistic. Tim is now the bionic man though as they used these low profile metal plates in his foot this time.

Caitlin is loving school and is loving reading, she has just taken to it like a duck to water. Her writing is a bit further behind, but she's doing well and keeps us on our toes.

We've just had the Easter weekend and there was snow on the ground on Easter day, so I rushed out before breakfast to layout and easer egg hunt round the garden so she could do it in the snow as she wanted. By the time she got out it was already melting and too slushy to make snow balls, but she did like running around the snow in her wellies collecting eggs.

I've not had much time or energy for crafting apart for jewellery. I've been making jewellery, especially as my independent study was on the use of jewellery as a creative therapy, I attended a jewellery making class, making pieces from scratch. Which developed my skills further, I loved hammering metal to create a textured finish on the copper. the necklace in the picture is one I made, the leaf shapes I cut, hammered and finished from copper, then assembled with the copper jump rings, round links and toggle clasp.

The lariat style necklace is one I made and absolutely adore. I originally made it as I didn't know what I could do with the silvery beads which have flecks of brown and aqua in them. The combination seems to work beautifully and I've had more compliments about this necklace than any other I've made.

Recently I've started to pick up my digital scrapbooking more, partly because Tim kindly upgraded my memory in my laptop, so it can cope better with digi scrapping and partly because I have been developing some stuff for placement using digi scrapping as an activity.